# Michael Drout

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about Oriana’s choice of topic: Tolkien’s invented writing systems. The graceful lettering of the Tengwar, easily Tolkien’s most well-known writing system, is now a calling card for his work in general on the level of the Ring itself, Bilbo, Gollum and more besides. Less …

J.R.R. Tolkien's work is more than just a great story. Michael Drout's book is part memoir and part scholarship, tracing Tolkien's masterpiece as a work or literature and a work of life. You'll never read Lord of the Rings the same way again. 

Sometimes it's the hardest times that teach us what is most important. In the second half of this episode on The Tower and the Ruin, Dr. Michael Drout opens up about the sorrow behind the book and how Tolkien's stories helped him through.